U.S. Should Order Halt to Israeli Attacks
Israel's latest military assault is a disproportionate and inhumane response to Palestinian militants' cross-border rocket attacks against Israel, which recalls its devastating and widely condemned military assault on Lebanon just two years ago. The U.S. must act swiftly and decisively to prevent an Israeli massacre of Palestinians, since Israeli officials have said the military strikes could continue for days or months, and could include ground forces.
While the U.N., the European Union, Russia and Egypt have harshly condemned Israel's use of force while also calling on Hamas to end the rocket fire, the Bush administration today blamed Hamas for the end to the cease-fire and demanded that it stop firing rockets and limited itself to calling on Israel only to avoid hitting civilians. MPAC also calls on the Obama transition team to be ready to fairly and constructively address the conflict in the Middle East when they take office.
Earlier this month, MPAC called on the administration to follow the footsteps of the U.N., which called for Israel to lift its stifling blockade on the Gaza Strip. The economy has been paralyzed; food, water and electricity are in short supply; and observers have described conditions there as "the worst ever." The policy of collective punishment has now escalated beyond the blockade to crushing military force that may be aimed at Hamas, but is also costing the lives of civilians who are struggling just to survive in the brutal economic situation.
In "Envisioning Peace: The MPAC Perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," MPAC calls for a two-state solution where each state is truly and fully sovereign on an equal basis.
Since the inception of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories on the heels of the Six Day War in June 1967, scores of U.N. resolutions and calls by the international community for an end to the most crucial aspects of the occupation -- notably the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories -- remain unheeded.
And it is that occupation, now as then, that stands at the heart of the conflict between two peoples engaged in a vicious and utterly unequal struggle over territory. It has taken a terrible toll on all those involved in the conflict. Today, there is a generation of Palestinians who have known nothing but occupation and a generation of Israelis who have experienced only dominance over the Palestinians.
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We, some people here in Israel, see the world news presenting the war in Gaza.
We feel that we have to share a few important facts with the world around us.
To us it seems obvious, but apparently the world news does not show it and so the world doesn’t know our side of the story:
The world doesn’t know about Hamas people running around in Gaza while grabbing 10-year-old kid from his mom to protect themselves from gunshots
The world doesn’t know about hundreds of trucks loaded with food, medicine, and aid that the Israeli army provides to help the Palestinian people
The world doesn’t know about the phone calls that the Israeli army is making to the people of Gaza warning them before striking to minimize civilian casualties even if it means losing the element of surprise and letting terrorists escape with the civilians.
The world doesn’t know that Hamas have been firing rockets on the civilian population in the South of Israel for the last 8 years….!!!
And the Israeli population is leaving under constant threat for 8 years, running to shelters with each bomb, can't send kids to school or go to work safely every single day.
The world doesn’t know that by the time Hamas leaders hide in underground bunkers and tunnels, they leave the Gaza population above ground unprotected (the same population that elected Hamas in democratic ways)
The world doesn’t know that the Hamas terrorists use civilian facilities like schools, kindergartens, and mosques to launch their rockets towards Israel, and then, after Israel strikes these weapons stores, they show pictures of these bombed civilian facilities to the world.
The world doesn’t k now that the checkpoints that Israel keeps in the west bank are to prevent suicide terrorists from terrorizing civilians in Israel’s main cities
The world doesn’t know that Hamas are using ambulances to move terrorists from the west bank in to Israel, and to smuggle bomb vests under stretchers with old people lying on it.
The world doesn't know- we’re facing a terrorist organization here, that's whom we deal with and that's what we’ve experienced for the last 8 years-
And we waited so long without saying a thing, (no country in the world would have waited that long) but now time has come to protect ourselves from terror, for good!
Please let everyone know about our side of the story, even if we fail to say it out loud on the media- we the people want the world to know and be aware!
How can you talk to someone whose idea of discourse is to send random rockets into your country multiple times per week. Let me see how this works, hmmmm. If Mexico sends Rockets to my country, U.S.A., then we should talk and see if we can get them to stop?! I think not. Stop the bombing, then we'll talk! What a no brainer!
Why would Mexico send rockets into the US in the first place? For the fun of it?
I was speaking hypothetically. But, if you must know I suppose that Mexico could always claim their right to the state of Texas which we took in the American/Mexico war and demand that we give it back. We don’t agree to their demands, then they retaliate with regular rocket bombardments into our boarders. We then warn them to stop, they don't and we respond with enough firepower to silence their attack. Case over. Sound familiar?
Agreed. We're on the same page. No act of agression is without provocation. I am neutral and would like nothing more than to never hear another word about the immaturity in the middle east, nor the inept moronic IQ of US government.
Decades ago we needed a ground army in the middle east and airstrips. Thank you Israel. Our modern weaponry no longer makes us have to pay the price tag for renting Israel to the US military. Israel as a strategic outpost has long outlived its usefullness. And I'm sick of paying high rent for abandoned property.
I hope President Obama (The only president in decades with a 3-digit IQ) will make an intelligent move toward nailing down a permanent cease fire. I avoid the word peace which is not possible for at least a couple of generations, given the US can succeed in electing a string of intelligent presidents that long.
I'd like a news channel that covers the Israeli - Palestinian conflict the way it did Afghanistan, and Iraq (before we started loosing). Day to day reporting on who's f-ing over who. Because I'm getting too old to keep wondering WTF is going on over there, really.
An American Who Thinks We've Got To Be F'ing Kidding
@ Socialist Betty: Response & Retaliation
When attacked, self-defense is considered a pretty legitimate thing to do. See the link in my full comment to BlueLinchpin. Rioting Palestinians swarmed into the new Israel, and within days Israel was attacked from all sides by the “Arab Legion”. Israel has been defending itself from murderous Arabs ever since.
Betty, et al, if you “sit” for peace, the Arabs will ignore you & continue trying to eliminate Israel, and will kill you if you happen to be in the way, however unarmed you may be. Sure, they “shouldn’t” be violent, but that is what they are. Misinterpreting history, misinterpreting their intent, seeking out seemingly benevolent actions by the Arabs of the region, will not change the large body of them who only have Jewish blood on their minds. Martin Luther King was in America, where few whites were on a crusade to kill blacks. Ghandi was opposing factions within his nation (as was King), not numerous other nations intent on genocide! Your proposal IS crazy, and 60 years of Arab hostility to Israel, does not seem enough to you. Muslims are on a serious campaign, a jihad, to spread Islam over the whole World. Israel is a particularly sharp thorn in their side.
The funny thing is, you are so committed to the idea that Jews are the warmongers that you cannot see the facts even as I have listed them quite plainly. That is a pretty severe, though not uncommon, thinking problem.
You said, “At SOME point, someone has to take a stand. A simple stand. If one person simply stands, and is joined by others simply standing for peace... that is how change will occur. “ Reality is that if the Jews had done exactly that, they would have been slaughtered within weeks of the creation of Israel. Yet you believe the very people who want the Jews dead that are the victims. Besides being historically wrong, that view is a complete moral inversion. Those who think that way have a moral obligation to do some critical research.
You suggest the Palestinians (and I add: all Arabs) drop their weapons, and simply be peaceful. Absolutely, I agree, because that would end everything! However, you go on to say they should keep moving. To where? Israel. They have no right to invade Israel… unless they immigrate properly. There are over a billion Muslims. Would you have them ‘peacefully’, and unarmed, walking into America? Would you then allow them to establish, democratically, an Islamic caliphate and imposing Sharia law? That lifelong intent has been drilled into them since they could stand. You would soon find how well you would be treated if you refused to where a burka.
RnBram, says, "Would you have them ‘peacefully’, and unarmed, walking into America? Would you then allow them to establish, democratically, an Islamic caliphate and imposing Sharia law?"
The West has been storming into their countries, armed to the teeth, with no hint of democratic process, establishing whites only magistratures and military tribunals, to impose pseudo-impartial law.
"That lifelong intent has been drilled into them since they could stand." Who has done the drilling RnBram? Their leaders? Or the West itself?
The West was invited into Middle East to open up oil reserves. Once a lot of drilling sites, refinement installations, pipelines, dockyards &tc. were in place, the Arab nations nationalized (read: stole) the lot. The initial set up was by peaceful agreement with the Western Nations involved (mainly the U.S.). Both sides stood to gain. The Arab reneging on their agreements by nationalizing American interests ought to have brought a military response from the the West, not necessarily war but a guarding of the original agreement with clear overwhelming force.
What is this vacuous blather about "democratic process", when you are referring to nations of non-enfranchised populations controlled by sheik princes, Muslim clerics and dictators? Here you are, accusing the West of behaving badly, with no regard for the distinctly worse character of those Mid-East Nations. How inscrutably moronic can you be!? This claim of yours is absolutely "beyond the pale". What mid-east nation was put under martial law by any Western nation since WW2 and before the War on Terror? You have been drinking way too much Canadian Leftist Kool-Aid.
You cherry pick a time frame that suits your agenda: post-WWII.
My time frame, the only honest one for this kind of problem, refers to several centuries of conquest, colonization and oppression. After hundreds of years of armed assault, Islamic civilization is torn between factions bent on revenge and a far larger group willing to move on. Rebuilding a coherent society that has been deprived of self-determination for centuries, is no easy task.
To watch someone beaten to the ground with cudgels, and then to jeer at their "drunk and disorderly behavior" as they try to get back to their feet, is a pretty fair analogue of your position.
Oh. Yes. "Vacuous blather", "Inscrutably moronic", "drinking Kool-aid". Further proof that you are running with your tail between your legs, RnBram.
From its founding in the 6-7th century until the Battle of Vienna in 1683, Islam was expansionary in all directions. While sometimes peacefully, the sword was common. The oft-cited Crusades represent 200 years of a 1,000 year period where Europe briefly pushed back.
During this time, Islam was at war with both 'infidels' and with itself. Muslim empires grew and fell - replaced more often with other Muslim empires than anything else. I fail to see how you could refer to 'several centuries of conquest, colonization and oppression' when the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for over 600 years ruled over most of this area until 1923. Any 'conquest, colonization and oppression' during this time was Muslim on Muslim.
I don't know who you think was beating the Muslims to the ground with cudgels, but it must have been other Muslims! Western influence has overwhelmingly beneficial to the area. We offered democracy, technology, and education. But many reactionary Muslims decry those very things. They want a theocracy, and they don't want women educated.
The West has been responsible for many atrocities and much barbarism. If you were talking about India and Hindus, you would have a far better case. But Muslims should have no heartburn with the West. If they are ignorant and backward, it is not because they have been held back - it is because they have not demanded better of their leaders.
RnBram says, "Betty, et al, if you “sit” for peace, the Arabs will ignore you & continue trying to eliminate Israel, and will kill you if you happen to be in the way, however unarmed you may be."
Perhaps you should read about Rachel Corrie, RnBram. A college student from Olympia, Wash., who had been trying to stop a bulldozer from tearing down a building in a Rafah refugee camp. She was alone in front of the house trying to get them to stop, She waved for the bulldozer to stop. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going, it completely run over her and then reversed and ran back over her.
RnBram, et al, if you “sit” for peace, the Israelis will ignore you & continue trying to eliminate Palestinians, and will kill you if you happen to be in the way, however unarmed you may be.
Sure, they “shouldn’t” be violent, RnBram, but that is what they are.
Corrie had no business being where she was. It is stupid, stupid, stupid to put yourself between a bulldozer and its intended target. Stupid is and stupid does and it often ends predictably -- as it did in the Corrie case. If good intentions were sufficient to end the ceaseless stupidity of Hamas and the IDF we'd have had the last of these discussions 50 years ago.
The proper response is to provide the IDF and Hamas as many bullets, rockets, mortars, etc. as there are combined Palestinians and Isrealis -- then let them wipe each other out. Enough of their endless bickering.
No one know what actually happened from the driver's perspective. The driver clearly grasped that he had hit her, and it is known that he backed OFF her, not "back over her" as you viciously suggest. It is quite something the gossipy nonsense you Muslim apologizers will accept as gospel!
Bottom Line, the Corrie case is utterly incidental, and very very stupid on her part. You have accused me of collectivizing the Palestinians, yet here you use one instance as some sort of assault on all of the IDF. Can you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y ?
RnBram. You, blatantly collectivizing, claim "Arabs" ignore peaceful resistance. I present a case that shows very clearly that the Israeli government is no less capable of ignoring peaceful resistance, but you impune *me* with hypocrisy. Not very convincing.
My 'vicious' suggestion was, in fact, made by a colleague of Rachel, also from Michigan.
You say, "No one know what actually happened from the driver's perspective." Curious no? He's quite evidently guilty of manslaughter, within a refugee camp, yet according to you, there is no available record of the drivers testimony. If there is -- you're lying. If there isn't -- where's the oh so, honest and decent Israeli justice?
You say, "The driver clearly grasped that he had hit her" That's odd, the Jerusalem Post, quoting an Israeli military spokesman, reported that Corrie had not been run over and that the driver had not seen her. I think you pretend to more knowledge than you have, RnBram.
B.t.w, it doesn't surprise me that immediately step into ad hominem attacks as well, "... gossipy nonsense you Muslim apologizers will accept as gospel". Clear proof that you have no leg to stand on and wish to drag me into exchanging insults. I have no need of that; you have no where else to go.
it is a trivial point in this discussion. The details are debatable, that's fine.
You brought up the Corrie thing with your views on it, and they are every bit as suspect as you say mine are. Your mentioning "refugee camp" raised an alarm bell with me. What do you think a refugee camp is? This one (Gaza), which I have already discussed in other comments, does not seem to fit with your view. I don't know if it is possible to link to a single comment on this website, but it is not a place where Palestinians need stay if Palestinians took the appropriate measures I outlined.
BTW, you and Betty began the insulting remarks.
Here's the thing... Hamas nor Palestinians should respond with violence.
Revolutions have and can occur without violence. Israel is not in the right. There should be no wall... there should be no reason for Hamas to fire rockets... However, a better approach would be to put down the guns, and simply march. Peacefully... en mass... to Israel. Carry signs, carry children, carry anything but weapons. Not a gun. Not a brick. Nothing. And simply sit. Women, children, men... and sing for justice and for an end to this. It sounds almost silly, but guns and violence - as it has been proven - only lead to what? More bombs, more guns, and more violence.
If this were to happen, do you think the world would turn a blind eye to Israel gunning down people who have nothing in their hands but bread and babies? Even this country could not justify it. To simply keep walking into Israel to the capital, carrying the dead, is a response that no one could ignore.
Palestine is not entirely innocent. At SOME point, someone has to take a stand. A simple stand. If one person simply stands, and is joined by others simply standing for peace... that is how change will occur.
Marin Luther King has a holiday named after him. because he took exactly this approach. Ghandi is one of my heroes because he took exactly this approach.
It works. All Palestinians have to do is join themselves together and - no matter what happens.. if bodies fall, pick them up and keep going - keep their peace and know that the world will not let Israel get away with absolute murder. Even if it has before.
The only way to end violence is for many people to respond with the absolute conviction that non-violent means of attaining justice (and in some ways, retaliation and retribution) will always prevail.
It only states that they are devoted to killing all Jews and pushing Israel into the sea.
Or maybe because they're not Israeli they derserve to be bombed. Children deserve to die because of Hamas. Previous to that, they deserved to have their food supplies cut off. They deserved to have their power cut off. And what did you do? Nothing. Because they're not Jewish, they deserve to have a wall built around them. Wrong for Berlin, but A-Okay for Israel. Where was your outcry against injustice then? Or maybe your morality only switches to the 'On' position when you're toeing party lines.
Do you go to church, Jim? Because I see you're a fan of Rick Warren for the inauguration... How sad that you would advocate the needless deaths of people simply because you're swallowing the lie that Israel is always right. Is that what Jesus would have you believe? Seriously.
You people who think people deserve to have bombs falling on your house when you've done nothing need a swift kick in the balls. Even if they're sitting in the White House's vault.
DO NOT take this to mean that Hamas is deserving of group sainthood... or whatever it is in Muslim practice. Three lefts equal a right, but two wrong do not. Get it straight.
Can you explain to me how a wall built to keep people from fleeing a tyrannous police state and a wall built to keep would be murderers out are the same? I am intensely curious. (Pleez use small wurds, I are dum.)
Children do not DESERVE to die, ever; neither Muslim children, nor Jewish children. But when the neighbors store rockets in the house where the child lives that house becomes a legitimate target. Should the child be hurt in the destruction of those rockets, the culpability, both morally and legally, rests on those who stored the rockets. Hamas is wrong twice: Aiming at civilians and then again when they store rockets in mosques, schools, and houses they are wrong again. There is no legal obligation for the IDF to call a house and tell the people to leave before they bomb it. (Perhaps a small moral case if you have the database that the IDF does, but were that database not available, there would be no moral case for them to hold their hand from damaging those who wish their doom.)
I see plenty of wrongs, but far and away the most numerous and egregious are committed by the Arabs.
The members of Hamas will be burning in Hell for their murderous behavior, both against their own people and against the Jews.
If you had a child in front of you, and you had to boil that child alive in order to possibly save the lives of 40 other people, you would do it? That's what you're telling us? That an action such as that is justifiable if *IF* it might save 40 others.
You're saying that just because you don't SEE these people dieing that it's okay? Because you don't have to slit their throats yourself, it's acceptable?
You're saying that killing people is justifiable because there Might be terrorists near by?
Bullshit. And quite frankly Jim, before you speak about other people burning in hell you might want to really stop and think about what the fuck you claim to believe in. Or maybe you think that because you "believe", you'll be saved... despite the fact that you violate every principle the man called Jesus preached. Ohhhhh but you're killing anyone... you're just actively advocating for it. Huge difference. I'm sure that'll earn you points.
I don't have to give you reasons for the wall... the UN has done it for me. The World Court has done it for me. In fact, nearly anyone of consequence recognizes this as being a gross violation of international law and human rights. Go look it up your own self instead of using your unreasonable dislike of Arabs as a moral meter as to what's right or not.
Would I damn my soul to save forty? Interesting question. It might be justifiable, I would need to know more about those whom I might be saving. Risk my life to save forty lives is an easy question: Of course I would.
Like everyone else, I fail at perfect morality. I know this of myself, and I accept it when people tell me I'm being a jerk or worse. Likewise I try to help people get past their foibles. Some things are just wrong, and deliberately killing children is one of them. How is aiming a rocket at a kindergarden not an evil act?
You're right, YOU don't have to give me reasons, but you could point me to off to who ever it was that explained how the Berlin and Gaza walls are the same. All you have told me is that two groups of questionable moral authority say they are the same. (Though I do wonder why you seem to think I hate Arabs. Most of the Arabs that I've dealt with seemed to be decent. Do you know something about them that I do not?)
[Aside about the Jesus thing, I can't have violated ALL of them, I have taken his words from the book of Luke, Chapter XXII, Verse 36 to heart: He that hath no sword, let him sell his cloak, and buy one. I even updated for the modern age and bought a gun, that I might better protect friends, family, and guests when they are near me.]
My self editor must've been sleeping... APOLOGIES FOR THE F-BOMB!
BlueLinchpin seems quite able to ignore Palestinians’ random murder of Jews. He does this, while pretending that the destruction of Palestinian homes (usually occupied by terrorists) is some kind of evil. To the extent that the Palestinian homes were occupied by those who voted for Hamas, or were leaders of Hamas, such destruction is fully and entirely legitimate. The latter people wish to impose their relgio-racist beliefs on others (the Israelis), or kill those who refuse. Their view is simply not moral, it is an evil and destructive sentiment. The destruction caused by that sentiment is evident all over our World. Israeli attempts to fight back is a self-defense, and the blood that results is on the hands of the Palestinian/Hamas/Hezbollah terrorists
For some reason the character count limit has dropped from 5,000 to 1,000 characters without warning...
cont'd
"To the extent that the Palestinian homes were occupied by those who voted for Hamas, or were leaders of Hamas, such destruction is fully and entirely legitimate"
So Rachel Corrie's family is justified to seek out the bulldozer driver and destroy his home with his family in side? Why not, RnBram?
Rachel Corrie stood in the way of a man taking action in defense of his country and family.
If a murderer comes into your home, kills your wife and he or his accomplice is *unmistakably* planning to kill your child, what would you think of a man stepping in and stopping you from fully deterring (even killing) the murderer in self defense? Rachel & her group were that interfering man. They were wrong to be there, and therefore would be wrong to 'retaliate'. See below where you raise the Corrie topic again.
How is bulldozing a home in a refugee camp defending a country and a family?
It's a hydra-headed monster. To such cruelty, malice and racist hatred, the victims, their family, friends and neighbors are supposed to react -- "Oh, that's fair! They're just defending country and family"? I don't think so. If with each home destroyed you create yet more militancy, what have you gained?
Now, today, for every maimed and broken child in the Gaza Strip, there is a high likelihood of yet another father or brother, insane with rage, to be driven into the folds of the extremists. You support that RnBram, don't you?
If a murderer bulldozes his way into homes all around your neighborhood, kills wives and children and is *unmistakably* planning to continue killing, what would you think of a woman stepping in, without violence and at huge personal risk to herself trying to stop him?
Do you claim, "She was wrong to be there!" I don't think so.
She was very wrong to be there. See my comment here (I figured linking to specific comments):
http://www.opposingviews.com/comments/hamas-could-care-less-for-its-own-civilians-as-long-as-jews-die
A 13 year old boy who is IN it sees the big picture at a glance... you could too. My "Kool-Aid" comments are not a commission of the Fallacy of ad hominem (look it up), as I was not using the terms to argue against any of your points, I was simply describing the mentality behind them.
You haven't proved your case at all.
You're views are based on cherry picked "facts", if not blatantly invented ones.
You deliberately ignore the broader geopolitical picture of which Israel and Islam are captive both. You backpedal on your shamefully long list of insults, and claim I started it. (Where? Sheesh.)
Worst of all, the logical conclusion of your position tends toward either rewriting Islamic texts or annihilate all Islam in "self-defense". Or something along those lines. Beat'm into submission? Wall'm off?
How about totally terminating all and any interference in their affairs? That's not even on the radar, is it?
If anyone wants to get an idea (this won't interest you RnBram) of how official policy distorts leader's views of reality, see Robert McNamara in the the movie "The Fog of War". Years after the end of the war, he has the courage to visit the Viet Cong leaders he fought against. He is appalled to learn, for the first time, that the "VC" were never fighting for communism, they were simply trying to get foreign powers (first French, then American) out of their country, and regain self-determination. Communism was merely a mobilizing idea, against the invader's mobilizing idea -- quote Capitalism unquote.
The point? American leaders used "Communism" then, to explain away reaction to their imposed presence. They use "Islamic Terrorism" now, to explain away reaction to their imposed presence. Now as then, it is propaganda, pure and simple.
"Communism was merely a mobilizing idea, against the invader's mobilizing idea -- quote Capitalism unquote."
In what context? Are you talking about Soviet communism?
"The point? American leaders used "Communism" then, to explain away reaction to their imposed presence."
Where are you getting this fantasy?
"They use "Islamic Terrorism" now, to explain away reaction to their imposed presence. Now as then, it is propaganda, pure and simple."
The War on Terror was launched as a specific reaction to a specific event: The WTC and related terror. Osama Bin Laden claims he was motivated primarily by the US military presence in Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden is (was) a Saudi citizen who approached the Saudi leadership with a plan to "protect the holy sites of Islam" as a measure to secure the nation without allowing any "infidel" presence while threats from Iraq were imminent. The proposal was seen as delusional by the Saudis, who begged the US, and even paid for the entire operation.
This tainted OBL's view of western world even further, and he continued adding irrational objections to his list of complaints.
You seem to have no clue WRT actual history. Your arguments are based on a distorted view of the history as presented by the hard left, and you then add your own collectivist values to these distortions.
"The Fog of War". Years after the end of the war, he has the courage to visit the Viet Cong leaders he fought against. He is appalled to learn, for the first time, that the "VC" were never fighting for communism, they were simply trying to get foreign powers"
It's probably true that the satellite states had no idea how dangerous it was to use the ideology from a massive global threat such as communism was at that time. This doesn't make US actions right or wrong, though after the fact, and human is always remorseful of lost life, never more so then if one found out about a possible alternative long after the fact.
You simply have no clue as to the underlying violence that is fomented by anti-establishment threats. The United States has created the most liberal democracy in the history of man. While it was under threat, extremely painful decisions had to be made. No doubt that out of context, many of the proxy wars were tragic. Knowing that today is not equal to saying that the Cold War was 'wrong." The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed many freedoms, including their universal denunciation of the entire Soviet system. You should study this if you want to know. Most of the documents are available from the major historical events that were publicized before the collapse.
We can say that all humanity is made from the same substances, if one observes groups who create evil, we can first assume that the systems or organizing their society is flawed rather than inferring any person or people-group is inferior in some way.
Many systems are simply different, and don't make for easy comparisons. Ask any of the former satellite states from the Warsaw Pact if Soviet Communism was evil. You are a moron to pull out Vietnam as evidence the Cold War was a mistake, and then to infer that Islam is being smeared for no reason.
If you defend Islam, you have to defend the crusades, the inquisition, and pretty much ever other random act, because you will have to argue that there is no sense of universal morality. Morality is purely situational. Then stop wasting my time, because you have nothing to complain about. Get it?
Think carefully before you reply. I'd really love to hear your theories about how Islamic militants are victimized by the imperialists in the United States. You have failed the most essential civics lesson of all, by not understanding your own system of government.